Palin backlash continues as Republican lawyers head to Alaska to take back her $150,000 campaign clothes

Sarah Palin is sorting through her luggage working out what clothes belong to her and what do not, her spokesman said yesterday.

Meg Stapleton added that the Alaskan governor was coming under unfair attack from a 'firing squad' of anonymous John McCain staffers in a frenzy of finger-pointing.

'It’s a circling firing squad,' said Ms Stapleton.

In a string of damaging briefings, it was claimed that Mrs Palin had spent 'tens of thousands' more on her clothes than budgeted for, that she once met McCain aides dressed in nothing but a towel and that she did not know Africa was a continent.

She was also unable to name the nations in the vitally important North American Free Trade Agreement. There are only three - her own, its northern neighbour Canada and its southern neighbour Mexico.

Palin was at home in Alaska and not giving interviews, although she is lined up to speak at length to Fox News on Monday.

She and an aide are sorting through luggage to identify campaign clothes purchased by the Republican National Committee.

The designer clothing, which Palin intends to return so it can be donated to charity, became a damaging election issue that is still haunting the defeated vice-presidential candidate.

But Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy aide, praised Palin and said attacks from other staffers were 'dishonorable'.

He told The Anchorage Daily News: 'I think it’s unprecedented in terms of presidential politics to have this level of vindictiveness and pettiness. It’s like these people fell out of favour with a middle school 14-year-old girls’ clique. It’s really unbelievable.'

Much of it is over the Republican National Committee’s purchase of more than £90,000 in clothes for Palin.

Anonymous aides have described it as a Palin shopping spree that went further than previously reported, including staffers using their own credit cards to clothe her.

One McCain aide described the shopping spree in some of America's most exclusive department stores as 'Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast'.

Divide: Sarah Palin watches as John McCain gives his concession speech and, below, the shoes of the candidates at an earlier rally. Republican bosses have complained that Mrs Palin and her family spent more on new clothes and shoes than previously reported

According to Newsweek magazine, a party donor who agreed to foot the clothes bill was expecting to pay out up to £15,000.

He was stunned when he received the bill for nearly £100,000. And that wasn't even the whole tab, it was revealed yesterday.

But Stapleton said the campaign brought in a New York stylist to Minneapolis, where Palin was stuck in a hotel suite practising her speech for the Republican National Convention.

The stylist’s job was to make Palin look vice presidential, Stapleton said, and the campaign went out and bought the clothes, bringing them back for Palin to try on.

The question everyone in America is now asking is what’s going to happen with the clothes.

The Republican National Committee has said they’ll be donated to charity.

The New York Times reported anonymous advisers describing the campaign as incredulous about the shopping and saying Republican National Committee lawyers were likely to go to Alaska to conduct an inventory and try to account for all that was spent.

Stapleton said Palin has 'no notice' of any RNC lawyers coming to town.

She said Palin asked that everything not belonging to her - including clothes - be taken off her campaign plane in Phoenix before she returned to Alaska on Wednesday.

That didn’t happen, according to the Anchorage Daily News, so Palin and another aide were going through the luggage, sorting through what belongs to Palin and what does not.

The clothes are 'not her property. It’s the property of either the RNC or the campaign and so they have said it will go to charity. The governor would love for it to go to an Alaska charity but I don’t know," said Ms Stapleton.

Mrs Palin denied the claims of extravagance yesterday, laughing off suggestions that she lived a 'diva lifestyle' in Alaska.

'The knives are out and Sarah's getting filleted,' one U.S. television network reported yesterday.

All dressed up: The rich and varied wardrobe of Sarah Palin was on full display during her election campaign

Mrs Palin's aides hit back, claiming she was naive about designer labels and outraged when she found out how much her suits and dresses cost. Spending by staff was reimbursed, they said.

They also revealed she was enraged by leaks from officials dubbing her a 'whack job' - slang for mad.

Last week's hoax call from a Canadian comic who convinced her she was talking to French leader Nicolas Sarkozy caused fresh aggravation because she conducted diplomacy on the hoof - and then failed for three days to tell the McCain team she'd been hoodwinked.

There was a striking metaphor for the doomed partnership when the pair went their separate ways on Wednesday afternoon. Mr McCain, 72, drove himself away from their hotel base in Phoenix, Arizona, in his own Toyota.